Friday, May 20, 2016

The Parable Of The Madman (1)

By Dan Amor

In
his short story, "The Madman",
Prof. Chinua Achebe (of blessed memory), easily Africa's most celebrated
novelist of the twentieth century, ventures into a poetic realization of a
disturbing irony. The consuming paradox centres on the protagonist, Nwibe, a
wealthy farmer who has so distinguished himself that he is about to be
initiated into the select, dignified society of men who hold the highest and
most venerable title in the land- the Ozo
title holder.

*Chinua Achebe

Returning from an early
morning work on his farm on a fateful Afor Market day, Nwibe stops to have a
bath at the local stream. Meantime, a desperate madman comes along to quench
his thirst at the stream; he sees Nwibe's loin cloth, gathers it and wraps it
over his nakedness. Angered by the sordid affront, Nwibe runs after the madman
in obvious nakedness thereby turning himself to the original madman.

Symbolically,
this involuntary but tragic exchange of identity between a sane person and a
madman is registered by the jeering, ironic laughter of a taunting madman.
Nature, which seems to be participating passively in this tragic irony,
solemnly echoes the madman's mocking laughter: "the deep grove of the stream amplifying his laughter."
Nwibe, who has been appropriately compared to Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart as a
man of "fierce temper whose
judgement deserts him when he is under its full sway", fully
recognises not only the outrageousness of the madman's affront, but more
significantly, he understands the ominous import of the sacrilegious challenge.
The words Nwibe screams out to the madman: "I
will kill you ... I will whip that madness out of you today", convey,
in fact, more than the obvious threat.

They
also carry the veiled desperation of a man who realises that his precious life
is about to take a certain tragic turn if nothing is immediately done to save
the situation. The condition in which a stark-naked sane man pleads through a
threat with a clothed madman for, of all things, clothes to cover his
nakedness, is rife with a sweeping irony. In his stark nakedness, Nwibe pursues
the fast-retreating clothed madman who is "spare
and wiry, a thing made for speed." In a short while, what Nwibe has
dreamed, swiftly becomes a merciless reality in the irony of mistaken
identities. The involuntary transfer of clothes which only threatens possible
disaster which, in fact, is still laughable, while it remains a private matter
between Nwibe and the madman, suddenly assumes a tragic dimension the moment
the first witness appears on the scene: "Two
girls going down to the stream saw a man running up the slope towards them,
pursued by a stark-naked madman. They threw down their pots and fled
screaming."

With
this, the exchange of identities is complete and the irony which makes possible
the acceptance of appearance as reality is triumphant. As though fate has
decided that day to crush Nwibe completely, the pursuit of the madman to
receive his loin cloth leads Nwibe to the highway and, worse still, into the
marketplace, where he is seen in his stark-nakedness by everyone. Now, Nwibe is
no longer just an ordinary "madman" but an incurable one at that,
given the African belief that a madman who sets foot into the "occult territory of the powers of the
market" can never be cured again.

Tradition, indeed, proves
to be only too true in the fate of Nwibe, who, even after he has been
"cured", remains a shadowy ruins of his former promising self. He is
denied entrance into the dignified and ever polite Ozo society. Once the central irony of mistaken identities has
firmly established itself, several other minor ironies inevitably follow. There
is, for instance, the situational irony of Nwibe, running stark-naked into a
crowded market shouting: "Stop that
madman...he's got my cloth!"

From
this central irony of mistaken identities also emerges the ironic situation
whereby a reputable "medicine man" loses his fame while a mere
charlatan overnight acquires the reputation of the best "mad doctor"
(psychiatrist) in town. Nwibe, of course, only needs time to recover from the
shock from his traumatic experience; but when he does, the credit for his
"cure" ironically goes to the charlatan. This situation appropriately
occasions the sarcasm that the "mad doctor" who "cured" him
becomes the most celebrated in his generation. In fact, the most devastating
irony that emerges from this story, however, concerns the fact that the
foundation has suddenly been effectively removed from under our
self-assuredness as cognitive beings who can distinguish fact from fiction.
Perhaps, it is only in Shakespeare's Hamlet that we can draw a convincing
logical inference to this analogy. Shakespeare's extraordinary power of
observation and penetration granted him a degree of insight that it has taken
the world almost four consecutive centuries to decipher.

Even
up until now, we must understand the existence of a tiny dividing line between
the sane and irresponsible and the responsibly insane. Suddenly, we are made to
entertain doubts concerning our perception of the nature of reality and we
begin to credit the philosophical doubt that affirms illusion and reality to be
the same. And if, indeed, we cannot distinguish truth from untruth, reality
from illusion, a sane man from a madman, then we exist because the
philosophical evidence of our existence as human beings is, "I think, therefore I am." The
situation whereby a perfectly sane person is identified and treated as a madman
not only underscores the precariousness of the claim of every sane person to
sanity within the society, but pinpoints the basic subjectivity of existence
and human judgement. In fact, we cannot be sure of anything. We cannot, for
instance, be sure of who is actually sane, in all sincerity, in the context of
this story. Is the "madman" really mad? Is Nwibe truly sane? Can we
vouch for the collective sanity of the people of Olu and Igbo as contained in
the story?

Would
a truly sane person allow anger and desperation to rob him of his better
judgement and run stark-naked for whatever reason into a crowded market? But,
perhaps, what the story has done is to equate extreme anger with insanity. The
psychiatrist will accept this view, but that makes every one of us a madman
since we are all capable of, or have actually experienced extreme, irascible
anger one time or another. If we are all insane, what moral right do we have to
certify some people as mad? The extreme clarity of the logic of the madman as
he walks on the highway seems to suggest that he is perfectly sane. And if he
is actually sane, then is it not the society that labels him mad that is
actually insane? This story might not be inviting us to abandon our own logic
and judgement of sanity, but it has certainly introduced doubts into the
authenticity of our perception of reality. Again, isn't it safe to think that
Nwibe's emotion is in excess of the reasons for his action as they appear, and
he specially contrasts it with the madman's negative and insignificant
personality?

We
may well attribute the exaggerated effect of his misfortune to Nwibe's lack of
moderation. We have unveiled only the exciting cause, not the predisposing
cause. The very fact that Nwibe is apparently content with running stark-naked,
even into the market place, arouses our misgiving. For, as will presently be
expounded, from the very nature of the emotion, he cannot be aware of the true
cause of it. If we ask, not what ought to produce such soul-paralyzing grief,
but what, in actual fact, does produce it, we are compelled to go beyond this
explanation and seek for some deeper cause.